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Saturday, April 7, 2012

I've switched to WordPress. It's not even with a heavy heart that I tell you this.

There are a number of different reasons for making the switch. I guess the main one is that I like the look and feel and editor for WordPress a lot better. I also have more control over the interface, my own domain-name, better visibility, etc.

Furthermore, I'm finally growing a little wary of the Google. It's taken me longer than some others to have these faint stirrings of unease, but, well, I have them now. This piece provides a short list of reasons for WordPress's superiority over Blogger. I have to say, this one is probably what swung the linchpin for me:

4. Blogger can shut down your blog on a whim. I personally have witnessed at least three bloggers get their blogs shut down because Blogger marked them as a spam blog. It was a painful and long process for their blogs to be restored.

Hmmm. I don't like that. Bess Weatherby says that WordPress is "the dark side of blogging"; she's been doing this for longer than I have, and she's got a jillion followers, so her cautioning should not be taken lightly. But it also comes from a person whose blog would likely never be flagged as a spam blog by the Google to a person whose blog...well...whose blog is this blog. Heh. As an aside, I highly encourage you to follow her blog. See, I'm not in full-fledged tinfoil hat conspiracy-theorist panic-mode about all things Google. I mean, I have friends who are. But I'm not quite there. So you can safely follow Bess's blog. No one will kill you...

OK. Someone might kill you. I have no idea. But it doesn't seem likely that someone from Google will kill you in connection with your subscription to Bess's blog.

But I digress.

WordPress is more secure and its interface is trimmer. And at any rate, it's where I'm going. I would love it if you continued to follow my work over at the new site: http://www.tdaviddemarest.com. There is an option for email subscription right at the top. For those of you who prefer RSS, there's an option for that, too.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

So. The Eastern Orthodox Church. You asked what eventually turned me from it.

Short answer: I'm not sure what turned me from it.

Long answer: During the winter of my senior year at Hillsdale (known in some circles as the worst four months of my life), I was about ready to kiss an icon and phone it in...to Constantinople. I don't know what others' flirtations with the East entailed, all I know is that I was attending Orthodox services and meeting with a priest back in Corvallis, Oregon, over Christmas break that year. I was all but convinced. I don't know why exactly I didn't swim the Bosporus. The mix of influences tending that way will probably never again be as strong or as compelling as they were in that season of my life. I don't think it will happen again, which is to say that I'm as close to completely sure as I am likely to get that I will never go to the East. If it's possible to say that -- at the same time -- it's even less likely that I'll go to Rome, then....well, I'd like to say that. Rome has never been less appealing. The East has been more appealing than it currently is, but it's not particularly appealing, either...

...Dr. Jackson sure did a number on my ability to make a definitive statement.

Ultimately, I didn't go East because I think that on some important levels -- indeed, on the most important levels -- what the Orthodox Church teaches is untrue.

Let me put this another way:

It's a beautiful poem. It's incredibly compelling. It's mystical. It's at once esoteric yet more traditional than anything else out there. And it's the best Pascal's Wager imaginable when it comes to Christianity. Seriously, everyone accepts their sacraments, but they don't accept anyone else's sacraments. It's kind of hilarious -- the strongest point of agreement between Rome and the East is the validity of the latter's sacraments. If an Orthodox priest goes over to Rome, all he has to do is vest, and then he can celebrate (as celebrant, i.e., consecrate) the Eucharist in a Roman church. Hilariously, if a Roman priest wants to go East, he was to go to confession with an Orthodox priest, be absolved (of his heresy..tee hee), and THEN he can go celebrate the Eucharist...

But I digress...

I just don't believe it. I mean, I just don't believe that Eastern theology covers even close to enough of what Christian theology is truly about: the forgiveness of sins. Absolution. Ironically, the East preaches roughly half of the content of the Gospel. As expansive as it is, their theology is too small. It expanded on the wrong direction. So, yeah, it's a beautiful, swollen half-theology. I mean, don't misunderstand me -- when I read John Zizioulas's work, I find it incredibly compelling. I find his Eucharistic theology amazing. That chapter from Being as Communion that Jackson had us read, "Personhood and Being" -- it changed my life. It's amazing. I even ordered the whole book, I liked it so much...please don't ask me if I've read the rest of it yet. Seriously, though, it changed me.

But at the end of the day, I absolutely believe in juridical atonement, in forensic justification, in the substitutionary nature of Christ's sacrifice. With all my heart. Sold out. Because it's what Scripture teaches. It's in Christ's own words, especially in His last will and testament, given to His disciples the night when he was betrayed. It's what the Holy Apostles taught. It's what the Church Fathers, when they were doing exegesis, and not just philosophizing, taught. I know that saying so doesn't make it so. But...well, I find that as a Western (Lutheran) Christian, I have little trouble believing practically all of what the East teaches about atonement. And more. And the "more" is crucial -- literally. It's the crux theologorum. And it's here that the East swings wide.

The East doesn't understand that the sinner is not just sick, but dead; that he is not just distracted from what is good, but totally inclined towards what is evil, "desperately wicked" in ways hidden from himself, even. The East does not believe that the righteousness credited to you on account of your faith in Christ -- faith which is itself a gift, and not the product of your own reason or strength -- is everything. They do not think that God's pardon is enough. They, like Rome, do not think of grace primarily as God's merciful disposition towards us sinners, but as some magical substance which enables you to somehow "work out your salvation", which -- contrary to Jesus last words -- is most emphatically not finished. While they nicely avoid the errors of Roman legalism (briefly summarized: the belief that you need to use the little bit o' prevenient grace you get at conversion/baptism/baptism of desire/whatever to win more grace from Jesus's Treasury of Merit -- a task which Mary and the saints can help with, since Jesus is grumpy and not at all inclined to listen to your pleas for grace but just might be less onerous and grudging if His mom asks on your behalf; it's the big holy hedge-fund in the sky, complete with insider-trading), they instead fall in with an unmitigated, un-Scriptural mysticism. The Eastern Orthodox are pretty much the original hipsters.

To be fair, the testimony and content of the Scriptures is rather unbelievable. It's a simple truth to which the natural man responds in disbelief, "What?! That's it?!" It's insulting to our intelligence. Sola Scriptura is for rubes, right? I mean, remember at Hillsdale when even people whose churches totally held to Sola Scriptura (and not much else) would take snarky potshots at it? It's not nuanced, apparently. (Well, it's straw man isn't -- that's for sure.) It's passe to say that the deposit of the Holy Apostles' teaching is enough, and that the proclamation of the truth contained therein is itself a means of grace by which the Holy Spirit creates faith and converts sinners. So be it. I guess at the end of the day (I say "at the end of the day" a lot -- a lot of days end when I write) I'm very much a "one-thing needful" Christian. It's just Jesus. It's all about Jesus.

That right there -- isn't that unbelievable? Yes, it for sure is. Maybe that's why so many don't believe it.

...

Right?

O-K. We can call this portion of the show "Theological Truisms with Trent."

But, really, the fact that it's unbelievable is why even Christians (like this one) often don't believe it (Lord I believe; help Thou my unbelief). To make matters better (or worse, depending on where you're standing), Jesus even gets His Holy Spirit involved, so you don't even get the credit for believing. Jesus does everything, and He doesn't need your help. In fact, what you would like to offer to Him as help, He would have you do as a free offering of love -- not to Him, really, as though he needs your good works (he surely doesn't), but to your neighbor (who surely does). This is not to say that you're not going to have to work hard. You will work. Very hard. It's just that you're not going to (are not really even able to) work hard for your salvation. It's done.

Here is, I think, an entirely natural response (one that I've had, in fact) to the ad hoc absurdity I have concocted in the foregoing paragraphs to represent what I, as a Lutheran, believe. The parenthetical comments will be "real Trent":

No, that can't be it. I mean, "only Jesus" is a good slogan (we might say). But I don't want to sound like a Baptist. I mean, such a statement is something we can nod our heads "yes" to, but...I mean...when we say that, what we really mean, deep down inside, is that it's all about Jesus and me. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, right? Like salvation! I can do salvation! I can save myself through Christ...who strengthens me! Jesus is on my team, and He helps me do all the stuff that I need to do to get right, be right, and stay right with God. (In order to avoid icky Western juridical connotations of "rightness", we could retool that last sentence by substituting "noetically reverberating" for "right".) The suggestion that I'm justified right now, where I stand, simply because Christ atoned for me on the cross, propitiated God's righteous wrath, expiated the contagion of my disease, forgave my crimes against God and man...and that I not only don't get to, but can't add to that, cuz what could you possibly add to that?...THAT suggestion irks me. Jesus may be Batman, but I'm sure-as-hell Robin (beneath this protest usually lurks a person who actually thinks of himself as Batman and Jesus as Robin).

I don't think God really knows how bad I was, and how big of a change I'm going to need to make. So I will invent my own obstacle course of supererogatory gymnastics, flexaroos, and jazzercises. I'm going to show God how truly devout and repentant I am by not accepting His kind offer of sonship, but by serving Him. What's that, God? Unearned adoption as your child, like all the bad stuff never happened? Well, that's pretty good, but how about THIS! I'll see your sonship, God, and raise you SERVANTHOOD!

Furthermore, I reserve the right to be stressed out about my salvation, and to spend my life doing something about it. The story of my salvation is like Lord of the Rings! It's a faith-adventure! I'm part of the Fellowship! It's big, it's beautiful, and it's angsty. I'm going to go to Mordor and throw my sin in Mount Doom, and I'm going to hang out with some elves (who are perhaps emergent church types), fight orcs (Presbyterians -- pretty sure), and cavort with dwarves (I think we all know who they are...rhymes with Beastern Borthodox). When God sees my sincere efforts, I'll be sure to get into His good graces.

Okay, okay...again, I'll make it more Eastern: serving God IS ITSELF His good graces...as long as I'm always doing, my doing will be my being and I'll have...Presto! Being as Communion. As long as I'm participating in the life of the Church, we're cool...

That was perhaps more fun to write than it will be helpful to read. Hmmm...

There's a certain caricature of Calvinist theology, specifically the teaching of "once-saved-always-saved", that says "you can fall on the boat, you just can't fall off the boat." As a Lutheran, I hold to a somewhat paradoxical position: you didn't get on the boat yourself, and it's impossible to fall off the boat, but you can sure as hell jump. So...don't jump? Anyway, it just occurred to me that you could caricature Eastern Orthodox theology in a similar vein (though I think it would be somewhat apt): if you stop walking around on the boat, THE BOAT DISAPPEARS!

I just don't believe it, Robert. The same things that I think are wrongheaded about non-denominational Protestantism are the same things I think are wrongheaded about both Rome and the East. At the end of the day, they stray so very, very far from Christ, and so very far from Scripture. All seem to me to end up with anthropocentric theologies of glory where we get to be protagonists in the story of our own salvation, at the expense of the Christocentric theology of the cross. They tend towards self-consciousness, and ultimately, self-centeredness. In making man more self-conscious, they make him less...well, actually conscious! They cloud Christians' already dim view of the Author and Perfecter of their faith, making it that much harder for them to fix their eyes upon Him.

It's certainly not impossible to find Christ in the Roman church or the Eastern church -- in fact, I'm sure that there are better Christians than I will ever be in these churches...including most of my favorite professors. But I'm too weak for such churches. If I were a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox, I would probably have already apostasized and/or committed suicide by now. There's just so much needless extra stuff -- stuff which could be absolutely good, right, and salutary, if only they first resolved to know and make known Christ and Him crucified, first and foremost.

Interestingly enough, the same things that I think are -- if not absolutely essential, then at least vitally important, to the life of the Church, and that I am grateful that Rome and the East have kept and guarded (the historic liturgy of the Church, the Apostolic teaching concerning the Sacraments, the Office of the Keys, the Patristic tradition), those same things have, well...always existed among the churches of the Augsburg Confession, until about the 1870's, when American Lutherans got all weird and absorbed some of the worser aspects of American Christianity, including the latter's anti-Catholicism. But such things have always been a part of historic confessional Lutheranism as it has existed since the time of the Conservative Reformation. Thankfully, there is currently a renascence among world Lutheranism, and many (I don't honestly know if it's most) Lutheran church bodies are rediscovering their confessional identity, rediscovering their truly Catholic heritage (I'm totally OK with Catholic, with a capital 'C', even -- what's wrong with Roman Catholicism is not its catholicity, but rather its Romanism), and realizing that we never agreed to leave the Western Catholic Church, and that as far as we're concerned (and, we trust, as far as God is concerned), we never did -- the opinions and anathemata of the Bishops of Rome for the last five-hundred years notwithstanding.

Hokay. I was not planning on writing that much. Forgive me for bloviating, but...well...you asked!

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Sorry for taking advantage of a "Reply-all" to people I don't necessarily know, but here goes...

Instead of a "stand up for religious liberty" day, how about a "stand up for Christian conviction even in the face of imminent martyrdom" day?

I do not expect to get my religious liberty back, as the bare minimum of "reasonable religion" which Madison assumed when he wrote the following quotation is no more:

We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man’s right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance. True it is, that no other rule exists, by which any question which may divide a Society, can be ultimately determined, but the will of the majority; but it is also true that the majority may trespass on the rights of the minority.

Yet I'm sure that Madison, if you told him that it was your religious belief that you were the thrall of Satan, and that the man downstairs demanded human sacrifice, wouldn't miss a beat in telling you, sorry, but your religion ain't "wholly exempt from the cognizance" of Civil Society. Why? Because absent the bare minimum of natural law, and legislative and jurisprudential institutions which recognize it, nothing stands in the way of people citing "religious liberty" for all manner of civil disobedience, not all of which is truly in the public interest. This current situation with the HHS mandate is no such instance; however, neither is the real problem with said mandate its violation of a generic religious liberty. No, there are many instances where religious liberty has been duly constrained for the sake of the public interest, many of which we as Christians support.

To reiterate, then: the problem is not that this mandate violates a generic religious liberty, but that what it seeks to mandate is pure evil, thus contrary to the natural law, thus contrary to the public interest. If we fail to articulate this and choose instead to crow that our rights are being violated (a tertiary issue), we will miss an opportunity for true martyria.

I will end my preachment here with this excerpt from Thaddeus Kozinski's excellent piece over at Ethika Politika a few weeks ago:

Do the Bishops want to send the message to Obama that his main sin is not being Lockean enough, in not adequately respecting the sacred “wall of separation” between church and state, in mixing politics and religion? Obama is being a bad liberal in not respecting the freedom of religion of some of the citizens, but he is also being a bad man in promoting an objectively evil practice. Do Catholics want to pressure other Americans in power to be merely good liberals, even if that would win Catholics a short-term reprieve? Should not the Bishops consider more carefully the long-term benefit for our country of declaring the truth, in and out of season, especially when it is becoming quite clear that nothing short of mass conversion to the Gospel can save us?

With that said, trying to "get religious liberty back" right now, while the bodies-politic and social are as diseased as they currently are, can be about as successful as giving a sick man a blood-transfusion from his own leg.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Momentary snow having been writtenUpon an untextured gray slate of sky,The day is now ready to show howIt may unfold. But no one sees,And so no one has born witnessTo the flurry.

If a tree having fallen in the forestMakes, or does not make, a sound,How, then, will the day's incipientIndecision ever be told to those whoSimply lived thereafter in the then moreFixed day?How can the haphazardness ofLucretius' oft-swerving atomsBe impressed upon us whose lives transpireIn their purblind circumstantial wake?Can a merely atomic creatureRecount this?

Thursday, February 16, 2012

I'm having a hard time putting my finger on just what about this panel-hearing made me so uneasy, besides the fact that it was three-and-a-quarter hours long (yes, I watched the whole thing). Here we had five men of the the cloth speaking cogently against the HHS mandate, which would require religious organizations and their subsidiaries to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients for their employees, either by paying for the drugs themselves, or by paying the insurance premiums to the company which provides the drugs. In many ways, it was wonderful to behold. The Rev. Matthew Harrison, president and bishop of my own church body, the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod, was among those testifying, and I have to say, I was right proud! Yet he along with the others kept invoking the American aura of religious freedom as the reason for their objection to this mandate. Freedom of conscience, they all insisted, is sacrosanct, and not to be violated by the government. The freedom to believe in and follow a set of religious tenets, they claimed, is enshrined by the Constitution, specifically Amendment I, which I will not bore you with by reproducing here. Google it.

I'm definitely sympathetic to this position. I mean, let me be clear: it's my position, too, and no one can convince me that it's wrong.

But another part of me doesn't really care what the government has to say about the free exercise of religion. Because on this particular point from among many, true and undefiled religion before God -- which I love, because I love Jesus -- bids me not to care. We are to cling to Christ our Heavenly Bridegroom for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, in plenty and in want, because even death won't part us, it will simply unite us fully with Him.

It is true of course, that when the U.S. Constitution stipulates that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, it means what it says.

It means what it says. Just how helpful is that?

Well, golly. I guess we should go and get someone to tell us what it says. I'm no devotee of Derrida, but we delude ourselves here if we think that interpretation of the "free exercise clause" throughout U.S. jurisprudential history has been consistent.

To whit:

Congress can't prohibit the free exercise of religion. Except when the free exercise of religion constitutes a violation of civil law. For example, if your free exercise of religion entails crashing jets into skyscrapers, it's prohibited. By Congress, no less. Crashing jets into skyscrapers kills people, and we, as a society, are against this.

Congress can also prohibit your free exercise of religion if the same entails you, as a man, marrying several women. (But fear not, men: you can sleep with as many women as you want, you just can't marry them all.) This particular exercise of religion is verboten, as the history of the Mormons proves.

Congress can also prohibit your free exercise of religion if your religion requires human sacrifice. And wouldn't we support this? I mean, maybe the U.S. Congress wouldn't be the ones to do it, but I'm sure that the local constabulary wouldn't waste time quoting chapter and verse, or your Miranda rights, to you if they catch you you with the knife upraised and your victim lying prone on the altar. No, they'll taser your human-sacrificing ass. And wouldn't we support this?

Now comes the HHS mandate. It appears that Congress can also prohibit your free exercise of religion if the same would have you refuse to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients.

Know how I know this? They just did. They passed Obamacare. Because they, in their collective wisdom and by means of their legislative prerogative, concluded that Obamacare was reasonable and prudent for carrying into execution all of their foregoing powers, etc., or something like that. I mean, it wasn't exactly the first huge entitlement package that was pushed through the hallowed halls. I'm not defending it. Just saying.

Anyway the brass tacks of the HHS mandate mean several things for the devoutly religious here in America. If you're a Roman Catholic hospital, or a Lutheran restauranteur, or a Jewish chiropractor, or a Baptist liquor-store owner, you can't refuse to comply with this mandate for religious reasons. You can't say, "the free exercise of my religion binds me to disregard this law," with impunity.

But you can say that, and you can do that, with...um...punity.

You can civilly disobey. Obey God rather than men. Ignore the government. Say your piece, and move on undeterred. I wish that more would have been made by each clergyman present of the fact of our future noncompliance. Why are we seeking to parley? Cause a major fuss. Clear the temple, so to speak. Let zeal for His house consume us, etc.

We do not have an unalienable right to religious liberty, my friends. It makes so little sense to frame this discussion in the context of rights. Freedom is the ability to do as you ought, and that freedom will never be taken away. Why? Because it is literally a freedom that you can die exercising. Indeed, to die is gain, the fullest fruition of such freedom. To face fines, imprisonment, persecution, and even death rather than forsake Our Lord is ultimately the fate of the faithful in this world. Paradoxically, it is the highest joy and the greatest blessing, as well. Remember that St. Paul, after mentioning his Roman citizenship to the tribune and gaining some leniency from it, ultimately went before Festus and Agrippa, and then before Caesar himself -- Nero, to be precise. In the end, all that his Roman citizenship did for him was allow him to be executed by beheading rather than crucifixion.

With all that said, just why is it, then, that we as Christians are walking around like we own the place? We don't! America isn't God's country. Indeed, this whole world is still in thrall to its prince, unless it become the Church, and be sanctified. But then it is no longer the world, for the Holy Spirit calls the Church out of the world, to be separate from it, perpetually other, even while in the midst of it.

But I digress.

I'm not saying that this hearing was a bad thing. No, it was wonderful to see these men speaking of His testimonies before Kings unashamedly, as it were. But we, the Church, need to be already thinking about how we will take "no" for an answer. Because that's what the answer is going to be, in one way or another, at some point or another.